Low, Trust [Rough Trade]

It's official. The summer ends on Sunday with the arrival of the autumn equinox. So party hard on Saturday night, sleep it off on Sunday and get yourself to your local record shop first thing on Monday morning to buy this album. Then put away your Ibeefa compilations and your Latin dinner-party conversation makers, because when it comes to soundtracking the dark, dismal nights of a British winter, no one soothes and wallows and reassures like this Minnesotan trio who describe themselves as 'Joy Division meets Simon & Garfunkel'.

'Trust', their typically wonderful sixth album, is a record to lie on the sofa in the dark and stare at the ceiling to, while the rain hits the windows and your soul hits the floor. It's simple music that's extraordinarily powerful. Proof that less is indisputably more. Slow and brooding, sparse and intense, desolate and hypnotic, it's something like the indie equivalent of Gregorian chanting, played out on simple guitar, bass and drums. Perhaps it's their religious background (two thirds of the group are Mormon) but tracks like 'The Lamb', with its urgent medieval drums, aching guitar strum and dark, sorrowful vocals conjur pictures of ancient rituals, while the tender sigh of 'In The Drugs' is at once other-worldly and uplifting. And so it goes on, wrapping you in a warm blanket of gentle, angelic male/female harmonies and snagging melodies, dwelling on a sadness, but somehow easing your pain.